Photo courtesy of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
"If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children."- Confucius
One of our goals at Kolibri is to get children of all ages and abilities interested in science and keep them interested. The best way to do that is to get them hands on with the world of science. To this end, we are currently working with a local high school to develop a partnership where the students design, build, program and help operate a remotely operated vehicle. That's right! We are going to help them build an unmanned submarine. They get experience with engineering, physics, programming and manufacturing technology and then get to apply what they have learned to helping locate and recover missing persons from bodies of water like the Great Lakes and the world's oceans.
We also offer shorter term educational activities for children including:
Owl pellet lab: The kids are given an owl pellet and we help them look through it and figure out what the owl has eaten from the bones inside. This is a great introduction to not only bones but also ecology and physiology. Suitable for children ages 6 and up.
Forensic Anthropology Lab: Some of our volunteers lead the kids through the excavation of a set of bones from the ground. We show them how forensic anthropologists, archaeologists and other investigators recover and identify what bone is which, how to tell human bones from those of other animals, how scientists identify who the bones belonged to and how what is found on scene can help solve a crime. NOTE: No actual human remains are used during this excavation in order to be respectful; casts of human bones and a deer skeleton are used. Suitable for children ages 8 and up.
Classroom, club and organization visits: We can provide volunteers who present on a number of forensic science topics to any audience from kindergarten onward. This is a great opportunity to show how what a class is learning about-- be it history, biology, chemistry, etc-- ties into the "real world" of forensic science.
We are also happy to create custom presentations and exercises.
If you are interested in knowing more, please use the contact form to reach out or give us a call at 812-746-4124
